From: BXHNGLTF@aol.com
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 1995 18:35:54 -0500
This is an excellent analysis of the goals and political aspirations of the
right-wing in contemporary politics. I highly recommend it to anyone who
would like a better understanding of the motivations of right-wing groups.
I have Suzanne's permission to post this piece on the net, and you are
strongly encouraged to forward it and post it anywhere on the net that you
would like. It is also fine to print it out and distribute it in hardcopy if
you so desire. However, if anyone wants to reproduce it in a hardcopy
publication of any sort, please contact Suzanne c/o the Women's Project in
Little Rock, Arkansas to obtain her permission.
Thanks!
Buzz Harris (BXHNGLTF@AOL.COM)
National Gay & Lesbian Task Force
New England office
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Right's Agenda - Suzanne Pharr
We are living in a time of social, cultural, economic, and political conflict
in which many values are shifting and being redefined. It is a time of
upheaval and change and fear of loss. Much of the conflict centers around
what we believe the U.S. should be - a pluralistic (many ethnicities,
religions, cultures), democratic society that finds a place and resources for
everyone - or what the Right envisions - a more monocultural, authoritarian
society that puts tight limits on people's participation. Should we have a
society that uses its resources for the common good or a two-tiered society
with increased economic stratification and poverty. It is a conflict between
the politics of inclusion and sharing and the politics of exclusion and
selfishness.
At stake is the historical dream of this country and the values we have held
onto in the ongoing struggle to try to make that dream real: that this
country is open, providing a place where people can come in search of
freedom, where people can find a place to be who they are and live
peacefully, where people can be equal partners with each other in the
creation of family, community, and government, where people have hope and
resources to meet their basic needs.
We are living in a time of danger. Because of decisions made by corporate
leaders in response to increased global economic competition, our standard of
living has been in decline for 20 years. Structural changes in the economy,
such as automation, "downsizing," and sending our plants overseas where
"underdeveloped" countries provide cheap labor, have accelerated the economic
crisis in the U.S. in the past decade. Economic and social problems, coupled
with a sense that a flawed government is failing the average citizen, make
people see answers in easy but aggressive right-wing populist solutions.
People's fears make them susceptible to right-wing propaganda that tells
them there are not enough civil rights and resources to go around. It could
become the majority "will of the people," unchecked by democratic process,
that literally kills minority voices and rights. Economic hard times make
people particularly susceptible to authoritarian leadership that scapegoats
minority groups as the cause of social and economic problems. Worldwide, due
to similar economic stresses and attendant cultural displacement, it is a
time when regressive populism could slip into fascism.
It is a time when we must all be particularly vigilant that justice is
evenhanded, that all rights are equally protected, that there is equal access
to educational and employment opportunity for everyone, and that we are
careful to recognize and work on the complex causes of our social and
economic unrest. Avoiding emotional, unexamined nationalism, we need to see
ourselves as world citizens, and act as responsible stewards of the honored
trust to develop and protect democracy and civil liberties. We must caretake
and expand the moral ground of justice and equal participation in democracy.
Who the Right Is
The Right has a long history in this country, stronger in some periods of
time, less visible in others. It is usually visible and active after
people's victories in their efforts to achieve equality. For instance, the
Right was particularly active after the abolition of slavery, creating the
racial discrimination and segregation of Jim Crow laws and terrorism of the
Klan to create a climate of fear. After successful growth of labor unions
and the battles of World War II, the Right organized virulently around
anti-Communism and was particularly visible in the McCarthy and House
un-American Activities Committee hearings. More recently we have seen the
Right grow in strength since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
organizing around economic and social issues that limit access to democratic
processes and the workplace. Race, gender, and economic class have been
central issues.
The Right consists of groups that range from the conservative free-market
capitalists to white supremacist neo-Nazis. It is not monolithic but a
confederacy of loosely related groups, individuals, and organizations, some
of which work in coalition with each other, some of which simply work toward
similar goals, and some of which oppose each other. The Right is supported
by numerous institutions: policy think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation,
legal arms such as the Rutherford Institute, and media outlets such as the
Christian Broadcasting Network.
The religious Right emerged as a contemporary phenomenon around 1972, at the
same time that conservative strategists were also shaping racist backlash to
the Civil Rights movement, especially affirmative action and busing. The
religious Right would focus its energy on issues of sexuality and gender
(i.e., homosexuality, abortion, feminism) rather than directly on race. The
religious Right also opened up an attack on a public school system struggling
to meet the challenges of racial integration through campaigns against
"secular humanism" and in favor of prayer in the schools and "school choice."
The religious Right generated a network of private religious schools, many
of them all-white. Both thrusts - the overtly racist Right and the religious
Right - began to provide scapegoats for the national malaise at a time of
declining standard of living and a tax base eroded by government giveaways to
Fortune 500 companies in the form of massive tax breaks. The vehement Cold
War anti-communism propagated by the religious Right also mitigated against
clear discussion of the redistribution of resources in the 1970s and 1980s
towards the wealthiest people in this society.
Because their views are highly visible through their own outlets and coverage
by the corporate media and because they have launched successful grassroots
organizing, the religious Right is the Right's most visible face. In this
time of social and economic crisis, they build a wide support base of people
by appealing to their fears. They then lead them to support social and
political exclusion of those different from themselves through mobilizing to
change institutions and government to limit who gets to be full working
partners in the every day life of this country, with full access to food,
clothing, shelter, safety, and health.
Some of their dominant organizations and leaders are the Christian Coalition
(Pat Robertson), Focus on the Family (James Dobson), Traditional Values
Coalition (Lou Sheldon), American Family Association (Donald Wildmon),
Concerned Women for America (Beverly LaHaye), Eagle Forum (Phyllis Schafly),
and Operation Rescue (Randall Terry). On the local level, there are
organizations that are affiliated with these national groups. For instance,
in Oregon, their primary organization is the Oregon Citizen's Alliance (Lon
Mabon) which has developed groups in Washington and Idaho in a strategy for
dominance in the Northwest.
Their Goals
Generally, the religious Right is attempting to replace democracy with
theocracy, merging church and state so that authoritarian leaders enforce a
fundamentalist vision in this country's public and private life. This
vision, developed from a narrow and literal interpretation of the Bible, is
of one white God who gives authority directly to man to have power and
dominion over the earth and its people, and its material resources.
This system requires a rigid hierarchy in which white men dominate women,
people of color, and nature. Consequently, any strides toward autonomy and
independence and full participation in society threaten this hierarchy.
Therefore the religious Right works to dismantle the gains of the Civil
Rights movement for people of color and women, tries to prevent lesbians and
gay men from achieving equality, and opposes efforts to protect the
environment. Its work is done in the name of morality, law and order, and
free market capitalism.
Their Targets
In the past decade, the religious Right has vigorously opposed reproductive
rights, teaching evolution, multi-culturalism or sex education, school-based
clinics, HIV education, gay and lesbian equality, welfare, parental leave,
tax increases for public funding of entitlements and social services, the
Equal Rights Amendment, affirmative action, pay equity for women, immigrants,
union organizing.
They have supported creationism, home schooling, school vouchers, censorship
of books and the arts, fathers' rights, laws limiting protection for victims
of abuse, privatization of social programs, severe immigration laws, right to
work laws, English only laws, and laws requiring tax increases be limited and
submitted to the public vote for approval.
In all that they oppose or support, it is people of color, women, children,
lesbians and gay men, and the environment that will suffer if they succeed in
their goals. In the end, it is all of us.
Their Strategies
The Right hopes to accomplish its anti-democratic goals through casting a
wide net of governmental, corporate, legislative, and social strategies that
destroy the possibility of equal participation in this country's public and
economic life. One must always remember that misinformation is a primary
tactic in all that they do.
Some examples:
* Taxation. This is perhaps the core issue. Throughout the country there
are anti-taxation measures on the ballot. Generally, these measures reduce
existing taxes, put a cap on future taxes, and require that all tax increases
be put to the public vote, requiring a two-thirds majority to approve them.
Because elections are generally won today by the amount of media that
groups can purchase, and since anti-tax proposals have the financial backing
of major corporations, massive media campaigns effectively sway the general
public which is frightened by the current economic conditions. This issue
has enabled the Right to bring together a very politically diverse group of
people and introduce them to a piece of their anti-Democratic agenda.
Result: There are inadequate public funds to pay for basic services such
as police, fire departments, schools, libraries, social programs. These
services are eliminated or become privatized and fall into the control of
corporate America or religious institutions. In California, the premier tax
revolt initiative, Proposition 13, which imposed tax limits has led to near
disaster in state and local services. For instance, in Merced County,
officials announced in November 1993 that to save $1.4 million a year, all 19
of its public libraries would have to close in 1994. (Richard Reeves, Money,
Jan. 1994, P. 93) If public institutions are privatized , then they cannot
be held accountable to the general population for their policies and
practices.
The elimination of taxes for public services is perhaps the most
devastating of all the strategies because lack of funds causes the basic
infrastructure of the country to crumble, leaving services (when available)
only for those who can purchase them. This destruction of the financial
infrastructure sets the course of our economic problems. Voting by a
two-thirds majority on every tax and fee increase basically ensures defeat
and hamstrings government in fulfilling its duties to the general population.
It is the anti-taxation movement that can render government incapable of
functioning.
* Lesbians and Gay Men. The issue of homosexuality has been the Right's
best fundraiser for their organizations and their best vehicle for changing
the country's thinking about civil rights. For several years, homosexuality
has been a flashpoint of the religious Right's organizing as they have
mounted an extraordinary campaign of distortion to play on the public's
economic and social fears. Naming and demonizing lesbians and gay men as
disease-carrying, sexual predators whose purpose is to destroy families, they
oppose through legislative and ballot initiatives the enhancement and
enforcement of civil rights protections. The Right constructs its argument
around an incorrect and misleading analysis of civil rights, stating that
lesbians and gay men must be prevented from gaining "minority status" (no
such category), affirmative action (a program, not a civil right), and quotas
(never enacted).
Result: As are immigrants and welfare recipients, lesbians and gay men are
scapegoated as the cause of social and economic problems. A primary purpose
of the attack against lesbians and gay men is to get the public to think of
all civil rights as "special rights" that "majority" people have the power to
bestow on deserving or undeserving minorities. By muddling the definition of
civil rights (to be protections one is given based on deserving behavior that
will then supposedly give a person immediate preference and gain in the job
market) and linking these rights to deserving behavior of minorities which
must be approved by public vote, the Right has thrown fundamental rights on
the public auction block. Rather than remaining the cornerstone of
democracy, these rights for everyone now become turned over to media-driven,
fear-based campaigns that are won by those who have the most money and are
able to best sway public opinion. In the end, any group that is stereotyped
as having bad behavior (such as immigrants and welfare recipients) - crime,
drug use, welfare abuse, teenage pregnancy, etc. - can have its rights
eliminated by current public sentiment taken to the voting booth.
* Welfare reform. Well before Clinton vowed to "end welfare as we know it,"
there was a movement to punish the poor by eliminating welfare. Under the
guise of "reform," there are efforts to limit benefits to two years, require
fingerprinting of recipients, require identification of the father of
children, force teenage girls to live with their mothers, require workfare,
limit the number of eligible children to two per family, and reward employers
rather than recipients for employment.
Result: Welfare recipients, portrayed usually as people of color, are
being scapegoated as a primary cause of economic and social problems in the
U.S. As poor people they also become targeted as a major cause of social
problems as the general public is led to think that they engage in criminal
activity such as theft, drugs, homicide, alcohol, and welfare fraud. They
are depicted as people who are on the take and unwilling to work. The
reduction of support for those whom capitalism requires to be unemployed
leads to increased homelessness, infant mortality, unserved health problems,
violence against women (who lack the support to leave their homes), etc., as
well as the moral bankruptcy of the American people who lose the values of
living in caring community.
* Immigrants. There is growing opposition to both illegal immigrants and to
the number of documented immigrants who are people of color coming in through
the western and southern borders of the U.S. They are falsely targeted as a
threat to American jobs, as a drain on social services, and as a cause of
overpopulation and criminal activity.
Result: As people grow more distressed over economic and social problems,
immigrants become scapegoated as the cause of these problems. Scapegoating
leads to discrimination and ultimately violence. Racism keeps the focus on
immigrants who are people of color, not the large numbers of white European
immigrants, and this leads to an increased consensus that our social and
economic problems are racial problems. Because it is impossible to determine
who is and is not an immigrant among people of color, then all people of
color are gradually considered to be problems. However, keeping up the
rhetoric of "illegal immigrants" as opposed to American-born people of color
serves to divide racially marginalized groups against one another.
* Public Schools. There is an attack on public schools from both within and
without. From without, there are extremely costly lawsuits, reduced tax
revenues, corporate privatization where corporations manage schools, and
efforts to get voters to approve vouchers for private schools. From within,
there are takeovers of school boards, censorship, struggles to control the
curriculum, and attacks against teachers which establish them as the central
problem in public education.
Carol Glaser reports in Sojourner (Dec. 1993, p. 15) on Bob Simond's
promise to the 130,000 members and 1,210 chapters of Citizens for Excellence
in Education, a religious Right organization: "We can take complete control
of all local school boards. This would allow us to determine all local
policy: select good textbooks, good curriculum programs, superintendents,
and principals. Our time has come!" His proof of his movement is the claim
that CEE followers won 3,200 school board seats in 1992.
Result: Public schools are first controlled by fundamentalists, then
ultimately destroyed and replaced by private schools operated by religious
organizations or corporations that are not held to any standard of equal
participation or curriculum along the lines of race, gender, or class.
Because our ideas of gaining equality in participation in democratic
institutions, the workplace, and public life are built on a foundation of
equal access to education, the destruction of public schools means that
education is limited to only those who can purchase it.
* Books, Libraries, the Arts. From the local level to the national, there
is a massive drive for censorship through local citizens demanding removal of
"offensive" books and materials, lawsuits, and government defunding of
libraries, the arts, public radio and television. A recent example is the
Traditional Values Coalition objecting to a short story by Alice Walker,
stating that it led children to question marriage and belief in God. Without
any hearing, school officials removed the book.
Result: Freedom of ideas and expression is destroyed, particularly the
expression of those ideas that differ from those in power. The dissenting or
minority voice, which is essential to democracy, is extinguished. Without
differences and choices, critical thinking cannot survive. Nor can freedom.
* Environment. For the last two decades, leaders of this country's major
corporations have united to attack and co-opt the environmental movement.
More recently, they have provided major funding for anti-environmental
groups such as the Wise Use Movement and for the election of
anti-environmental candidates. An example of their goals is their desire to
create a national mining system that would allow mineral and energy
production on all public lands, including wilderness and national parks.
Result: The major corporations become gradually deregulated and the
economy reprivatized so that for capital gain, they can exploit the
environment and labor in any way they choose. Privatization reduces the
avenues people have for redress. Currently, three out of five
African-Americans and Latinos live in communities that have illegal or
abandoned toxic dump sites, according to a study by the UCC Commission for
Racial Justice. Native Americans are under siege by major corporations
seeking new sites for dumping toxic wastes. Public lands such as national
parks are being opened up for commercial use. In the name of economic
growth, the environment becomes a landscape of disease and death for all of
us.
* Reproductive Rights. For over 20 years the religious Right has been
vigorously opposing women's right to control our own bodies. They have
fought women's right to choose through legislation, terrorization of clinic
workers, doctors, clients, major ad campaigns, boycotts, the courts, and
murder.
Result: Abortion becomes an option only for those wealthy enough to
purchase it and for those who are forced to subject themselves to frequently
unsafe alternative measures. Reproductive rights are a core issue: if one
does not have ownership of one's own body - which is all one brings into the
world and all that one takes out - then what do any of the other freedoms
mean? There is nothing more essential than the right to control one's own
body because it forms the base of autonomy and freedom.
* Sex Education. The religious Right opposes sex education in the schools,
in government funded programs, in books and materials - anywhere outside the
home and religious institutions. Obsessed with sex, they believe that any
discussion of sex leads to sexual activity that is outside marriage and
control of the theocratic hierarchy of God and man.
Result: Information is closed down that could help prevent unwanted
pregnancies, the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases,
domestic violence, child sexual assault, and promote good parenting and
healthy relationships. As with reproductive rights, promoting sex education
supports personal autonomy and freedom - and consequently the Right opposes
it.
* Multi-culturalism. In both higher education and public schools, the Right
has vigorously opposed teaching multi-culturalism (literature and history of
our diverse cultures), arguing that it destroys traditional western values -
and has used the inclusion of books about lesbians and gay men in the
curriculum as the emotional organizing point to bring together both white
people and people of color to oppose it.
Result: We entrench ourselves as a mono-cultural, English-only, white
dominated society in which all those who are different from the norm must
adapt themselves to white, heterosexual, Christian, middle-class behavior and
standards. Multi-culturalism presents all cultures as having equal value,
providing the student with many beliefs and customs to choose from. To find
one's way within these choices requires critical thinking which is essential
both to the workings of a democracy and to freedom itself. Critical thinking
is the major weapon against authoritarianism and fascism. It stands directly
in opposition to the Right's goals.
* Violent Crimes. The Right supports greater enforcement of the death
penalty and its expansion to cover more crimes. The current crime bill
before Congress calls for 54 crimes requiring the death penalty. They
support larger police forces, increased jail capacity, tougher border
patrols, reduction of the age for juveniles to be tried as adults, while
opposing gun control, rehabilitation programs for the incarcerated, and
orders of protection for battered women. They consistently link, either
overtly or covertly, violent crimes with people of color, despite evidence
showing that violent crimes cut across race and class. Omitted from this
get-tough-on-crime movement is significant discussion of violence against
women who are raped, battered, assaulted and violently killed in large
numbers every day.
Result: The public's fears about safety, plus pervasive racism, are used
to bring about a call for a more authoritarian government whose police state
will save us from violent people of color and social deterioration. While
all other public services are being cut back, police forces and jails are
being expanded rapidly. The Right is moving the body politic to a belief
that democratic principles can be sacrificed for the sake of our personal
safety. Race/racism is a major weapon the Right is using to justify the
destruction of democracy.
Conclusion
Several conclusions are probably apparent from this discussion. For
instance, it is no doubt obvious that the Right is not just one group, but is
a linkage of people and groups that share many of the same beliefs - and many
of those beliefs also reside in the general population, including those of us
who consider ourselves progressive. The Right is not working in a vacuum as
it moves the body politic, including Bill Clinton, to the right. It is
working with the racism, sexism, homophobia, and capitalist greed that exist
in ordinary people in this society.
Much of the current analysis of our ills masks the fact that it was a
combination of corporate greed and government policies, particularly under
Ronald Reagan's administration, that led us to this time of social and
economic crisis. When people are ignorant or forgetful of the cause of their
problems, they can be moved easily to scapegoat those closer to them as the
source of their dissatisfaction and discontent. They welcome anything that
relieves their discomfort and pain, even if it is state violence and loss of
freedom.
Ironically enough, it is once again the corporations, in partnership with
religious institutions, that stand to gain from all of the issues we just
discussed. Through a theocracy, they gain control of the populace while
capitalism runs unchecked, with obscene profits going into the hands of the
few, while less is spent on services and human needs for the many. The
Right, particularly the ground troops of the religious Right, paves the way
for authoritarianism by eliminating personal freedoms, autonomy, access,
participation, and critical thinking.
Thanks for the critical reading of this article by Chip Berlet of Political
Research Associates, Renee DeLapp of Oregon Public Employees Union, Kerry
Lobel of the Women's Project, Mab Segrest of the Urban Rural Mission of the
World Council of Churches, and Eric Rofes of the National Gay & Lesbian Task
Force.
c Suzanne Pharr, Women's Project, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1994.